Last June I had the great pleasure of hearing Esa-Pekka Salonen’s
Rite
at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, where the room’s remarkable
acoustic only enhanced the impact of Salonen’s reading –
perhaps over-the-top and mannered for some, but compelling nonetheless.
It was so satisfying that afterward I really didn’t expect,
or need, to hear the piece again for a while. (Although just as
an aside, I think it’s good to hear something you like at
least once a year live, if you can.)

Well, any thought of taking the Rite for granted was
blown to smithereens on Saturday night, when Pierre Boulez and
the London Symphony Orchestra made the walls of Carnegie Hall
absolutely smoke, with a relentless and ferocious version that
went a long way toward reminding me why the piece was so startling
to begin with. What was notable was Boulez’s focus on the
music – he used a score throughout, although at this
point he could do this in his sleep – and one lingering
image from the evening is of his neatly tailored frame, meticulously
leading the ensemble with his hands operating in almost military
precision.

What seemed to work not quite as well with the MahlerFifth two nights earlier, worked like a dream here: an
insistence on absolute clarity, a dogged fidelity to the rhythms
and their relationship to each other, and a rather crafty sense
of drama, envisioning the piece as a series of highs and lows,
escalating to its horrifying conclusion, instead of one blockbuster
moment after another. Rather than rushing to each high point and
thereby presuming that the moments in between are somehow lulls,
Boulez made the quieter moments seethe with tension, particularly
noticeable in the LSO’s string section, ready to attack
at any moment. Further, Boulez wisely held back some of his tricks
in reserve, so that some of the big moments later in the piece
emerged as genuine surprises. (It’s always a pleasure to
feel the vibrations of a piece like this through the floor.) A
score that in some hands can seem like one long noisy rant, here
had strategically planned contours.

Abetted by the grippingly vivid playing of the LSO, many sections
had the almost dispassionate reserve of a documentary film, but
one in which the events being observed are too disturbing to contemplate.
In the climactic “Dance of the Earth,” the rhythms
piled themselves on top of each other so dutifully, but so clearly
– you almost wanted the experience to stop, yet couldn’t
help watching. I felt as if I were being dragged along kicking
and screaming. The final sacrificial sequence was terrifying in
its implacable buildup, with Boulez patiently, quietly making
a clear break before the LSO percussionists thwacked the final
volcanic chord. The bassoonist, Rachel Gough, received not one
but two citations as Boulez returned to the shrieks of the audience,
and I would have been happy to see her stand up yet again. The
nightmare wouldn’t have been the same without her rather
deceptively quiet beginning.

Just prior came a hymn-like Symphonies of Wind Instruments,
with Boulez offering it in its original 1920 version. (It was
revised in 1947.) Coming before the clashing Rite, it
acted almost as a formal prelude, even though this was penned
seven years later. One could not ask for a better performance
than that with the confident LSO players, who gave it a glassy
sheen.

Sometimes I feel like certain Boulez works are direct successors
to Debussy, as if the latter composer had lived to be 150 years
old. If so, he might have written Dérive 2, whose
glistening clarity somewhat resembles Boulez’s Repóns,
although the latter is much more complex with its electronic manipulation
of sound. Scored for twelve players, Dérive 2
was written as an eightieth birthday tribute to Elliott Carter
(who could be spotted in the audience), and is inspired by ideas
of Carter, Ligeti, Nancarrow and even Beethoven, who (to cite
Paul Griffiths’ always incisive notes) created “slow
music that has a lot of rapid activity.” The surfaces of
Dérive 2 are pulsing, constantly in motion, with
each of the musicians surfacing in turn, before falling back into
the ensemble. The performance here could not have been more crystalline,
with the LSO’s terrific players offering cool-headed virtuosity.